Page 59 of Noble Scoundrel

“I’ll determine that.”

She sent a quick but thorough glance back toward the oak where she’d seen the man in the silk top hat and then scanned outward from there.

Still no sign of him.

“I thought I saw someone I recognized. No one I know personally but someone I’d seen the day our carriage was overtaken.”

“One of the kidnappers?”

“No. Just a gentleman I’d noticed watching us earlier that day. I could have sworn I just spied him again.” She glanced to the oak. “Over there. But then he simply...disappeared.”

“Tall, around thirty years of age, dressed in black, wearing a topper?”

Katherine’s eyes widened. “You saw him?”

“You don’t know who he is?”

“No. He does seem very slightly familiar, but I cannot figure out why. I’m certain I’ve never met him before. Do you think he’s involved?”

Hale didn’t answer that with anything more than a short grunt. Then he turned in his seat and made a sharp hand gesture. A second later, a stocky man with mussed black hair, a thick neck, and a heavy jaw rose from where he’d been crouched along the lakeshore. He took off at an easy lope down a footpath.

“What?” Katherine swung her gaze back to Hale. “What just happened?”

“I sent one of my men to follow him.”

“Follow him? But how? He’d completely vanished. Just how many men do you have watching us?”

The smile that widened Hale’s mouth then was full of self-conceit. But it only made the dratted man more attractive. “Instead of all the questions, duchess, you might consider trusting me.”

She was starting to notice he only called her duchess when he was irritated by her or when he wanted to irritate her in turn. Otherwise, he more often used dove.

And then there were those rare times he’d called her luv... She shook the thought from her head.

Shortly after, Hale instructed Newton to direct them home. She spent the rest of the drive thinking about the familiar-looking stranger, wondering how he might be connected.

The man in black had been watching her. She knew it for a fact. But how had he known she’d be at the park that day? Was he watching her house as well? Or had he been informed of their plans, somehow?

That possibility was frightening.

It didn’t help that deep down she felt certain she somehow knew who he was, though she could not connect him to anyone from memory. Her sense of recognition made absolutely no sense.

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